Jane Campion's first feature-length film, made in 16mm for Australian television. This is no find on the order of the three packaged shorts from her film-school days, Peel, Passionless Moments, A Girl's Own Story (the absence of Sally Bongers as cinematographer is a possible tipoff), though it undoubtedly has its qualities, some of the best of which are qualities shared with A Girl's Own Story: the thorough empathy with the vulnerabilities and agonies of youth, and yet at the same time a decent respect for grownups as well, and a very mature sort of honesty and detachment in sizing up the Big Picture. None of the actors, all of them unknowns, give you the slightest cause to think of them as mere actors. The storyline of best girlfriends on rapidly diverging paths is spun out in reverse chronological order -- as in the Harold Pinter stage play and screenplay, Betrayal -- so that we start out at their widest point of separation and work our way backwards over the course of a year to their lost togetherness. This, patently, has a built-in poignance, though nothing unattainable in a traditional flashback structure. The 16mm image is not very good-looking: heavily overcast, drab, dingy. And what with the Australian accents and bottom-drawer recorded sound, the required concentration for the most basic understanding may seem inadequately repaid. With Emma Coles, Kris Bidenko. (1986) — Duncan Shepherd
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